Last week, the New York Times published a story on a scary new casually transmitted disease that’s killed seven gay men in New York City since 2010. So far, every one diagnosed with the disease has been either a gay or bi-sexual men, and the contagion has accelerated in the past few months, bringing back a fear among the gay community that feels all too familiar.
A day after that, I interviewed British hip hop DJ Emily Rawson, who said she looked up to the late Lisa Left Eye Lopes growing up. She gushed about how Left Eye once wore a condom on her left eye in a music video to promote safe sex, at a time when the world feared AIDS. Lopes was an inspiration, Rawson told me, because she was a woman using hip hop to promote a real, scary, issue.
These two events reminded me that, yes, back on November 7th, 1991, we all thought one thing: Magic Johnson’s good as dead.
NBA x POP 